Singapore has three law schools and the SUSS School of Law is one of them. When someone asks what is the difference, there are some who will answer that the SUSS School of Law is a law school for matured students. That is, in my opinion, an inaccurate description. Maturity refers to a person’s state of mind. The way he or she thinks. Therefore, a 20 year old can be a matured individual and a 50 year old can also be immature. I believe the correct answer is that the SUSS School of Law’s students have an average age that is higher than NUS’ or SMU’s. The term matured student is a polite way of saying older student.
For that exact reason, I will be polite to 43 year old self and refer to myself as a matured student.
I entered the SUSS School of Law in 2021. I was 40 years old then. Going back to school at 40 years old is not easy. However, after completing almost the whole of law school, I do not think that it is as difficult as I thought it would be. In fact, I do think that studying law in my 40s at the SUSS School of Law is turning out to be easier than studying economics in my 20s at NUS. After giving it some thought (while on a plane to Bangkok for work related matters), I believe these are the reasons why I found this second degree easier.
Greater maturity
By maturity, I am referring to the state of mind. I believe that being older, married with children and running a company has given me a greater sense of maturity. When I was in my early 20s, all I wanted to do was to socialise. I was single then and I was always open to knowing more people. Especially people from the opposite gender! I was always into fitness and I spent more time at the NUS gym than the library. I am an avid cyclist and I would visit the Bukit Timah bicycle trails in between my lectures. Going to school was not primarily about getting my degree. It was about meeting my friends and doing the things I wanted to do. One of the most immature decisions that I made was to not do my fourth year in NUS to obtain my honours. I could have and should have completed that last year. I was in a rush to go out and work as I wanted to have financial freedom as soon as I could. This is also the reason why when I decided to do a degree in law, only the SUSS School of Law was a viable option. The other two law schools required applicants to have an honours degree.
Being in my 40s, I am more deliberate with my time. I exercise, study and even eat at fixed timings. I am more aware that the decisions that I make daily could impact me in the future. I know that I want to practice law and I set myself the goal of getting a second upper class honours. The reason for this is because I wanted to avail myself to a wider degree of options when I graduated. I asked a few who were in the legal profession, and they remarked that certain law firms would take only minimum second upper class honours graduates (Now that I am graduating I realised that this is not a common occurrence). Having a second upper class of honours would also allow me to do my masters at the other two local law schools if I ever decided to. That being said, the possibility of me pursuing the academic route is extremely slim. The three and a half years have reinforced my belief that I want to practice law and not be an academic. However, never say never!
A greater level of focus
Comparing my present self to myself in my 20s, I presently have a greater level of focus. When I was in my 20s, it was very difficult to focus. Back then there was Friendster, a pre-Facebook social networking app. I was good at making friends, so I had activities and gatherings on an almost daily basis. It also did not help that I was single, and dating was also a distraction (you can see a common denominator for my lack of focus in the past). It is very difficult to focus when you are constantly scrolling through your social media feeds. Back when I was doing my first degree, I could take a whole day just to read a chapter in a textbook. Fortunately for the current me, I find little joy in utilising social media. I do use it for work because it helps with acquiring clients and increasing my company’s brand awareness. However, I do not actively acquire new friends on Facebook or post much about my personal life. The only social media platform that I use is YouTube. I also like to blog. There is something deliberate about long form content that I find appealing. It feels like I need to put in more thought and effort to create a 10 minute video or a blog article. I find the fleeting nature of short form content unappealing. I know that I will need to utilise it in the future if I want to bring in business but it is fortunate for me that I am not distracted by social media.
A stronger sense of purpose
I say this in a utilitarian manner. From the day I stepped into the SUSS School of Law, I wanted to start my own law firm. While students in the SUSS School of Law are guided to become community lawyers, the law degree that we eventually obtain does not limit us to only practice criminal or family law. I know that if I want to have my own law firm, I need to think of how to sustain my practice. Modules that involve business law, contracts, property and wills and probate were the modules that I really wanted to master. I was not kidding when I told the tutor that taught me property law that I might do conveyancing.
While I knew that my purpose of studying law was to set up my own law firm, I developed an idea of how that firm would be run over time. My current ideal way of how I would run my law firm when I do eventually set up my own practice is to make it financially viable first and community law would come in by working with organisations like ProBono SG. I made a promise to the panel during my interview that I would practice community law and I intend to keep that promise. I am unsure whether those who interviewed me remembered what I said during that interview. That did not matter. The legal education I received in the SUSS School of Law helped shape my perception of community law and the importance of those in the legal profession contributing to the community.
I wanted to do law because I believed I would be good at it. Somewhere in my late 30s, I realised that I could not always be travelling for work. Also, my health took a toll. A doctor told me that I had mild hypertension, and I should take better care of my health. I wanted to do something different, but I still wanted a challenge. When you are working 7 days a week and ending your days at past midnight, the purported long hours that lawyers put in seem rather short. In fact, I have many friends who are lawyers and comparing my situation at that point in time, I realised that I was working harder than them. I was still essentially solving problems and I was reading various acts to navigate my business dealings.
Work experience helps greatly
Law is about solving problems. That was already what I was doing daily. In fact, I am still doing that today as I run my companies. As I journeyed through the course, I realised that my problem-solving skills have been greatly sharpened. I was taught to think in a logical sequence. This helped me with dealing with problems in my company. Clients’ issues became a logical table of “problem 1, 2, 3, in priority of severity”. I now ask my clients “what is it that you want?” and “could you list down what you want to achieve in order of priority?” All these questions are now at the forefront in my dealings with clients. It saves me time and also the client gets straight to the crux of the matter. Perhaps this comes as a result of having to be succinct when the word limit for my assignment is set to 800 words.
Trust me, when you have a hundred and one things to complete on a daily basis, the law school assignment becomes just number one hundred and two of the things you have to complete. Of course I would like to have the luxury of studying full time. However, that luxury was something I could only afford back when I was doing my first degree. However, understanding the limitations of time and also the fact that I can never complete all the things I want to do only comes with work experience.
Which reminds me… I still need to fix that leak in my roof.
The notes provided are so very organised
I do not know whether the law school provides us with such comprehensive notes because we are matured students. If they are doing it because they understand that we are mostly working adults then I owe the faculty a great deal of gratitude. If this is the norm then students of this generation are extremely fortunate. I find life so much easier in SUSS because the study units are provided for students with readings all clearly indicated within. Two decades ago I spent a great deal of time scouring for answers to assignments in the library. The provided notes were extremely limited and I had to take down notes during lectures. I spent so much time and money photocopying notes or certain pages (within the limits) of textbooks in the library. So very often the toner would run out or the paper would get jammed and I had to wait for technical support. Then there were selfish individuals who would hide textbooks in certain corners of the NUS Central Library so that others could not find them. Yes this is what a bell curve system does to some students.
If you are in your forties and are thinking of studying again, life is so much easier…
A supportive family
My wife is extremely supportive of me doing my JD. When I told her that the course would cost almost $170,000 over four years, she told me that I would make that money back in an instant because I would make an excellent lawyer. If I did not remember wrongly, I think she said I would make it back in one case. I cannot stress the importance of having a supportive spouse. My wife did not obtain a degree and yet she could understand why her husband would want to obtain his second degree.
Back when I was doing my first degree, my parents were less supportive of what I wanted to do because they had preconceived ideas of what their son should be doing. The fact that I did not turn out the way they felt I should turn out perhaps left them lost. I believe that if I were to work in the public sector, I would fit better into the mould of a person that they created for me. Instead, I have an interest in how businesses are run. Even to this day, I love the fact that my work in the corporate secretarial and accounting sphere allows me to see how businesses are run. One of my greatest blessings was that some members of my family ran successful businesses. My grandparents ran school bookshops. My aunt and uncle as well. I helped out at my grandparents’ bookshop at Serangoon Gardens Secondary School during my holidays. I was paid a paltry sum but those months gave me knowledge that no business school, NUS business school included, could have given me. Understanding the need to have processes in place, a proper check and balance when handling money and dealing with problematic clients put me in good position to run my own companies when I was in my thirties. Perhaps the fact that we all share an interest in business is the reason why my relationship with my grandparents, aunt and uncle is extremely cordial. My 94 year old grandmother often remarks that my future law firm will be very successful. She often remarks that I will make a good family lawyer and reminds me to do community work. She often tells me that there are a lot of very “cham” people in Singapore that need legal advice.
My wife often remarked that she wants to have her own business as well. She is a property agent and essentially she is running her own business. However what she meant was that she wants her own retail shop. A place where she would do her own research as to what the market is likely to accept and then providing that product to customers. Hence she can understand me when I spend time in the office dealing with clients.
Having settled down and having a supportive family is perhaps the most important contributor to me finding that law school is not as difficult as I thought it would be.
Still, law school is not easy. Having obtained my first degree in another local university, I would say that the academic rigour is similar in SUSS as it was in NUS. However, if what I stated sounds familiar to your current situation, you should be in a good situation to make it through law school.
Yours sincerely,
Daryl
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